FORWARDING AND CONSOLIDATION SUMMARY MESSAGE

This message is available for formal trial in the present version for a period of at least twelve months from the date of approval by the UN/ECE/TRADE/WP.4.

Organisations are invited to trial this message and are requested to notify their Rapporteur Team Secretariat of their intention. Comments on the results from the trial should also be forwarded to the Secretariat as soon as they are available. Based on the results of the trials, a UNSM will be issued.

It should be noted that this material is contained in a Trial Directory; however, it may differ from that in the UN Directories (UNTDID) having the same identfying tags. Any differences will be reconciled prior to the message becoming a UNSM.

This specification provides the definition of the International Forwarding and Consolidation Summary Message (IFCSUM) to be used in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) between partners involved in Administration, Commerce and Transport.

A message to be used for consolidation purposes from a party arranging forwarding and transport services to the party for which the transport of the consolidated cargo is destined. The message can be used to exchange information concerning the consolidated cargo between forwarders, carriers and agents enabling those parties to handle the consignments included in this consolidation. In addition it can be used for a collection of consignments originating from one shipper for forwarding and transport services.

The IFCSUM message is a functionality in its own right, distinguishable from the transport booking and instruction messages. IFCSUM focuses on separate business areas in transport where the view on the operations is transport means or equipment oriented rather than consignment oriented. These business areas do not concentrate on concepts like booking or instruction. The IFCSUM provides currently merely a statement for a means of transport or equipment and their summary type information regarding the consignment carried. The IFCSUM message also provides a means to incorporate the control and auditability information needed for the receiver of the message to perform the operation to be carried out.

IFCSUM is foreseen to be used:

in the consolidation and deconsolidation industry (stuffing and stripping of consignments in containers)

in the groupage and degroupage industry (the full load description of rail-cars and road vehicles)

in the collection and distribution industry (as the description of all consignments to be collected together (maybe from different places) and delivered at possibly different places in a certain region)

for the declaration of dangerous cargo by ship's agents to their Port Authorities (as listing of the dangerous cargo carried or to be carried by as means of transport)

The message provides information concerning cargo carried on a voyage specifying details regarding carrier, mode of transport, means of transport, equipment and the necessary details of the consignments included in the consolidated cargo. Under given circumstances a cargo manifest can be obtained through the use of the IFCSUM. For example, a IFCSUM message can be used in groupage traffic, where it may correspond to a loading list indicating the consignments that have been loaded on a truck.

There is a need for FUNCTIONAL SUBSETS to be derived from the message, for example:

CONSOLIDATION ADVICE giving information about the departure of a voyage/flight or consolidation to the receiver.

CONSOLIDATION STATUS giving information about the departure of a voyage/flight or consolidation to principals (e.g. carrier to freight forwarder, consolidator to co- loader etc.).

CONSOLIDATION REPORT giving information about the arrival and unloading, clearance, etc. from the receiver to the sender.

According to the different information requirements of carriers, carrier's agents, and freight forwarders for the different modes of transport like air, deep sea, inland waterways, rail, road, combined- and/or multimodal- transport different modal subsets can be derived from this message.

There is a need for INTRAMODAL SUBSETS to be transmitted between partners of the same mode of transport (e.g. railway to railway in different countries, deep-sea-carrier to deep- sea carrier, freight forwarder to freight forwarder etc.).

There is another need for INTERMODAL SUBSETS to be transmitted between partners in a multimodal transport (e.g. freight forwarder to trucker, trucker to railway, railway to port authority, port authority to carrier's agent, carrier's agent to carrier etc.).

A consignment may contain several goods items.

Goods items may or may not be containerized.

A goods item may be transported in one or more containers, and a single container may contain one or more goods items.

One goods item may be related to one or more customs tariff codes.

Goods items related to one customs tariff code may be carried in one or more containers.

Goods items may reflect either the contractual or operational description of the goods.

Pre-carriage (advanced haulage) and/or on-carriage (destination haulage) of goods items or equipment within one booking or instruction may take place in different steps, each step specified with its own transport details group.

Equipment may have other types of equipment attached to it, e.g. a temperature control unit attached to a container.

Equipment and/or goods items may be attached to or transported on another load or transport device, which as such may be attached to or transported on yet another load or transport device, e.g. a container on a chassis on a rail-car.

Transport devices, which have the ability of powered movement on their own, are specified in the transport details group. Other load or transport devices are specified as equipment.

The expression of packaging for goods items can be expressed at up to three levels.

A number of generic transport terms are used in this specification, to be described as:

MODE OF TRANSPORT: the method of transport used for the conveyance of goods or persons, e.g. by rail, by road, by sea.

MEANS OF TRANSPORT: the vehicle used for the transport of goods or persons, e.g. aircraft, truck, vessel.

TYPE OF MEANS OF TRANSPORT: the type of vehicle used in the transport process, e.g. wide body, tank truck, passenger vessel.

EQUIPMENT: material resources necessary to facilitate the transport and handling of cargo. Transport equipment does under the given circumstances not have the ability to move by its own propulsion (e.g. sea container, trailer, unit load device, pallet).

A group of segments to give information about the current customs procedure under which the transport is moving or to indicate applicable governmental procedures related to import, export and transit of the voyage/flight or consolidation.

A segment to give information about the current customs procedure under which the transport is moving or to indicate applicable governmental procedures to import, export and transit of the voyage/flight or consolidation.

A segment to specify the names and addresses of the parties which are loading, sending, consolidating, unloading, acting as transshipment agent, break bulk agent, etc. related to the specified transport stage.

A group of segments to specify equipment in which consignments are transported (e.g. trailer, railway wagon, ULD, etc.). This segment group WILL NOT be used in the deep sea context. This is because EQD in this context is used to define an extended transport such as a trailer attached to a truck, containers attached to a trailer etc. Containers in the deep sea context ARE NOT part of an extended definition of transport but are considered as integral with the consignment and are thus described at the consignment level.

A segment to specify processable instructions associated with the equipment named in segment EQD (e.g. instructions related to the delivery of the empty equipment after unloading of the consignments etc.).

A segment group to give information about all consignments included in a voyage/flight or consolidation. The segment group can be used in two different manners to serve different approaches to consolidate messages:

- Short form consolidation message

In this situation, single consignment based functional messages (e.g. booking and/or instruction messages) have been sent on a progressive basis between exchanging partners (e.g. freight forwarder on the export side to freight forwarder on the import side). When the loading of the vessel/aircraft or consolidation is complete the IFCSUM-message will be sent and will use the CNI-segments to identify the transport document/message number (e.g. bill of lading, air-way bill, etc.) of every consignment, the details of which have

already been sent as separate single consignment based messages (e.g. booking and/or instruction messages) or which will be sent as separate single consignment based messages following the IFCSUM-message using the option of grouping with the UNG-service-segment in a transmission. When the carrier himself loads consignments in a container or ULD the segment SGP following the CNI can be used to indicate in which equipment specified in the segment group 10 the consignment is loaded.

Thus the short form IFCSUM-message operates as a reconciliation and control statement.

- Extended form consolidation message

In this situation, the data for each individual consignment has NOT been sent to the receiving partner by means of single consignment based messages (e.g. booking and/or instruction messages) separate to the IFCSUM message. In these circumstances it is possible to include the details of each consignment into the IFCSUM-message. In that case the segment SGP following the segment CNI will not be used. For every consignment the complete structure of a single consignment based message can be used starting with the segment CNI replacing the BGM.

Thus the extended form IFCSUM-message has not the function of referencing but to show as full a set of consignment data as is necessary to meet the requirements of type of consolidation message being constructed, e.g. Cargo vs. Full Freight.

A segment to specify free form or processable supplementary information, such as status of transport, remarks to be printed on the transport documents (where required), consignment remarks, insurance instructions, etc., or any other additional information.

A segment to express a reference which applies to the entire consignment such as: the document/message number that is to be updated by this very message (according to data element 1225 Message Function, Coded in segment BGM), booking reference, order number, insurance contract, etc.

A segment to indicate date and time related to documents and/or customs- and/or governmental procedures for the consignment (e.g. date of issuing of customs document, expiration date of customs document etc.).